Improvement in Structural and Optical Properties of ZnFe2O3-δ in Nano Structured Materials with Fe2O3 Concentration

Abstract

At present time, technologies of particles at nanoscale are a blazing field for today's researchers. The transition metal oxide (TMO) nanomaterials are used immensely because of their colourful properties caused by their valence d-orbital electrons. The ZnO and Fe₂O₃ nano particulates have promised properties such as electrical, magnetic, antibacterial and photo-catalytical etc. In present work, researchers synthesized pure ZnO and Fe doped ZnO nano particulates by microwave irradiated chemical co-precipitation method. The as-synthesized samples were calcined at 600 ºC for 2 hrs. The various concentration (5, 10 & 20 %) Fe doped samples were examined through XRD, FTIR, FESEM and HRTEM tools. The XRD results revealed that calcined samples were formed of hexagonal wurtzite structure of ZnO parental structure with crystallite size 26 nm (5%), 44 nm (10%) and 50 nm (20%) respectively. The presence of Fe³⁺ ions produces a uniform strain in crystals. The significant IR peaks at position at 853 cm^-1 and 514 cm^-1 may be attributed by O-Fe-O & O-Zn-O of Fe₂O₃ and ZnO respectively. The morphology of nanoparticles was examined through electron microscopy i.e. FESEM and HRTEM. FESEM results showed that nanoparticles are irregular in size with stone-like polygon structure and porous in nature. HRTEM images revealed that particles are polycrystalline in shape, agglomerated in nature and nano in size. The average grain size measured by Image J software was 42.3nm and also supports the XRD results. The UV visible spectroscopic results of samples shows that newer materials are highly sensitive in the wavelength range of visible spectra and have ΔE – 1.8 eV respectively. So, newer materials may have recommended key material for fabrication of photo induced properties devices such as solar cell aided photovoltaic and photodiode. The PL spectra of the Fe doped ZnO nano particulates reveals that their excitation wavelength was 303 nm which is located in the strong UV emission region and has a solid emission peak at 665 nm which lies in the red region of white spectrum.